


breadcrumbs

by irnan



Category: Incredible Hulk (2008), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Mild Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-06 22:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Betty is aware that this is not going to work unless she can come up with a better plan than calling up the Pentagon and asking if they can direct her to a scientist who occasionally turns into a giant green monster, a specific one, she didn't just wake up this morning with a craving, she's actually his girlfriend, so would they mind very kindly putting her through... ?</p>
<p>Tempting, just to hear the reaction on the other end, but Bad Plan. For one thing, she's not sure the Pentagon knows jack squat about... well, anything. It seems expedient to take a different approach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breadcrumbs

**Author's Note:**

> Mild spoilers for The Avengers; Jossverse references included.

It's not the easiest thing in the world to find out where Bruce is, but Betty manages it by judicious bribery, a carefully-executed break in into her father's home and the application of several vodka martinis to his newest secretary. (That was the fun part of the operation.) The girl runs her mouth off about an organisation with the unwieldy name of SHIELD and the computer in the General's office is an up-to-date laptop but his password is still her mother's middle name. He's at some honours ceremony when Betty breaks in, and the silence in the house is familiar and comforting. She feels like a rebellious teenager who's been grounded and banned from using the computer, which, hello, they didn't even have one when she was still old enough to be grounded. But of course, that's not exactly a bad thing. If the General were ten years younger he might actually have bothered to encrypt or at least _try_ and hide his work files.

Betty goes up to the empty box of her own old bedroom when she's done and stands in the middle of it for a few minutes. Here's where her bed was. She thinks of herself as standing in her old chest of drawers, as putting a hand against the wall and having her fingertips sink _through_ an insubstantial poster for Duran Duran.  
Then, because she feels like it, she climbs out the window and stomps through a flowerbed, just to make a point.

When she's finally gathered all the intel she needs she sits in her kitchen with a pile of papers for the class she's teaching tomorrow morning on one hand and her own laptop open on the other, USB stick flashing at the side, the General's files waiting patiently for her perusal. Her mother's necklace is a familiar shape between her fingers; _she_ would never have let him do this.

Wouldn't she?

The words _Stark Tower_ feature pretty prominently in the files. The General - she refuses, even in the privacy of her own mind, to call him Dad anymore - used to have the kind of crush on Tony Stark that made Betty feel she'd failed her life by not being born a boy who designed weapons; that changed after Stark's kidnapping of course. After that there was a lot of talk about how he was betraying his country and his values, which is now something Betty and Stark apparently have in common.

The question is: how is she supposed to get into the Tower and find out what the man knows about Bruce and where he is?

Betty slants a look at the other pile, the class notes, the research, the memory stick with the power point presentation she hates because power point sucks, really it does. And she thinks to herself: _oh, there's an idea_.

She spends the rest of the night writing a carefully-worded application letter to Stark Industries and sends it off with the morning post.

Three weeks later she's invited to an interview with Tony Stark himself, as head of R&D. Betty studies the letter with a triumphant grin: this... might actually be fun.

She absolutely does not take a cab to Stark Tower. The rebuilding work is still going on; she threads her way through reconstruction crews and police, gawping bystanders, walls bedecked with photographs and letters to dead loved ones, bouquets of flowers strewn everywhere. The wind whips the dust up and tangles her hair, flaps tarpaulins, rips letters from the memorial walls and sends them fluttering in the street. How awful, she thinks; then she changes her mind, imagining words meant for someone she's loved, now gone, being torn away to dance on the wind and maybe, maybe, find a way to the path of the person they were meant for.  
She's being a fanciful fool, and that's not going to help her get to Bruce. Betty shakes it off resolutely and marches into Stark Tower.

The receptionist checks her ID, which Betty would think is a bit paranoid if it weren't for... what's outside, and calls up for a Miss Lewis. Betty takes a seat, smoothing her skirt to hide a sudden clench of nervousness in her chest: you idiot girl, you thought you could just walk in here and demand to know where Bruce is and that would just... work? She's about to confront a man they call the Merchant of Death, a man who builds himself flying suits that blow things up, who has more money than Croesus and more influence than her father.

The memory of what her father wanted to do to Bruce - the thought of what Stark might even now be doing to Bruce - stiffens her spine.

There's a scritch of sneakers on the smooth floors, and a woman in jeans and a Star Wars shirt says, "Dr Ross?"

Betty stares. They girl is about as old as the students she's supposed to be teaching right now, and she's wearing glasses, and her hair is an unholy mess. She holds out a hand, smiling. "Darcy Lewis, I'm Tony's PA. Whatever you do, don't take him too seriously."

Betty laughs in spite of herself. "I... thank you for the advice, Miss Lewis. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"It is," says Darcy Lewis easily. "A pleasure to meet you, that is. C'mon, I'll show you up... I saw your resume, I don't pretend I understood half of it but let's just pretend that I really admire your work and am in awe of your accomplishments because I would be if I understood what they are."

They reach the lift; Betty's still laughing. She likes Miss Lewis, she decides. "Well, I'm flattered that you'd say so."

Darcy grins. They make chitchat on the way up about getting here and the reconstruction going on outside until the doors ping open: there's a glass-panelled corridor, a succession of labs that get increasingly more interesting as they walk past, people in lab coats, a robot whirring happily in a doorway, someone's earphones thumping out Guns'n'Roses, a girl standing on a chair with a crowbar in one hand, gesticulating angrily at a - a something hanging from the ceiling, a mass of wires and panels, and Betty can hardly walk for staring.

"Not what you expect, is it?" says Darcy cheerfully. "But apparently when Tony started running the R&D department personally everything shifted to the wacky, he brings that with him, like an _aura_. Bruce says he's insane and that the next time some engineer stumbles into his offices wearing a suit of armour and a top hat the entire department will meet the Other Guy up close and personal but it was the Halloween party for crying out loud, it's not anybody's fault but his own that he never reads the memos."

Betty just about manages not to stumble in her heels, but it's a close thing. All the air's been knocked out of her. Darcy's watching her sideways and smiling. "You -"  
"Well, you would have gotten the job interview anyway," says Darcy, "but you don't really want it, do you?"

"Maybe I do," says Betty, irritated with herself - why oh why didn't she use a false name? Well, because then she'd've had to fake her academic record and get into all kinds of messes. And it appears to have turned for the best. "I kind of hate being made to include power point in my lectures, it's an insult to the human intelligence, I mean diagrams sure, but anything else is just - no."

Darcy laughs. "I like you, Dr Ross," she says cheerfully. "I guess you really have broken with your old man."

"OK, you know what?" says Betty, stopping in the middle of the corridor, because whatever else is going on here bringing her father into the conversation is like - like elevating Bruce's heart rate, it sets off an inevitable chain reaction that ends in mass property destruction and telephonic screaming matches, and also? College kid in sneakers condescending to her, fuck no, she is far too old to put up with that, _adulthood_ , Miss Lewis, get yourself some, Jesus H. "I've _had it_. Maybe this wasn't the best plan I could possibly have come up with but Christ Almighty I have spent the majority of the last five years jumping when the phone rings because it might be my asshole father calling to tell me he's finally caught up with and - and _dissected_ the man I _love_ , who happens to have the condition he does because of an experiment for which I am partly responsible, the last time I laid eyes on him he was jumping out of a goddamned helicopter and now you're standing there being an obnoxious college brat in fucking _Converse_ , how awesome is that, and if there's any way you could just tell me where Bruce is without all the theatrics I would really appreciate it, please and thank you."

Somewhere behind her, a door clicks shut.

"Betty?" says a voice she loves.

She turns around, and the world rights itself without further ado.  
  
*********  
  
"You actually - you applied for a job here?"

Bruce has an office, which contains a sofa, the proper use of which is obviously pushing him onto it and sliding into his lap, shoes under the desk and handbag and jacket God only knows where. Betty tucks her head under his chin for a moment, remembering how they used to sit like this - how long has it been, how long has it really been? She doesn't want to think about that. She's just got him back, after all.

"I did," she says, laughing. "I might even have meant it. I don't know. Why haven't you contacted me?"

"I - oh." Bruce shifts underneath her, not so much uncomfortable as guilty. Betty fixes him with a glare. "I was... scared to, I suppose. And, Betty, you need to know - I'm not suddenly less of a target. Now I just... have a safer place to hide."

Oh, it's Bruce-logic all over. Well, Betty figures she knew what she was letting herself in for. She'd be angrier if she wasn't so relieved he hasn't been dissected.  
"In Stark Tower."

"Right. I run the biotech department," says Bruce ruefully. "I mean, sometimes. Most of the time. It kind of happened by accident, Tony does stuff like that. He didn't even tell me about the paychecks at first. It's a little difficult to say no to him. And to be honest - well, I'd rather hang around and pretend to have a job than take his charity. I know he can afford it, but that's kind of not right."

"I'm still wrapping my head around the bit where you're on a first name basis with Tony Stark," says Betty.

Bruce laughs. "It takes getting used to." She sits back and studies him as he says it: unmissable the fact that he's less thin than he was, less drawn, less tired-looking, despite the grey in his hair that she doesn't remember. Betty's probably got some herself. And there's an ease to his movements too, a complacency, and the fondness in his voice when he talks about Stark.

"You like him a lot."

"I do," says Bruce. "I genuinely do."

"Then," says Betty, "I suppose I'd better, as well."

He strokes a hand through her hair, cups her face. She kisses his wrist, smiling, content, can't look at him enough, can't touch him enough, warm skin and steady heartbeat, here, really, _truly_ here with her. She leans in, and he slides his other arm around her waist, and the office door bangs open with a crash like the wrath of God.

"Cavemen or astronauts, Banner, oh hey, you must be Bruce's Betty, nice to finally meet you."

Betty jumps a foot and stares; her jaw's hanging open and there's a flush creeping up her cheeks. Bruce groans.

"Clint," he says. " _Out_."

"You'd think I'm interrupting something," says Clint, straight-faced, and winks at Betty, who goes even redder, because she's lying shoeless on top of Bruce on a couch in his office and they're both at least fifteen years too old to be caught like this, that's a thought that's been haunting her today, but she has sort of been acting like the twenty-something heroine in a bad action movie, Betty supposes.

"Clint!" yells Bruce.

"Leaving!"

"Barton, seriously," says a red headed woman poking her head in the door, "sorry, Bruce, I'll put a leash on him..."

"Please, sweetheart, not in public," says Clint gleefully.

She gives him a look that could probably drop whole armies dead at a hundred yards. Betty is impressed. Still embarrassed, but impressed.

"Clint," says Bruce.

"Hmm?"

"Astronauts."

"See, that's where you're wrong," says Clint. "And I will prove it at dinner. Six-thirty sharp, Cap says he's cooking."

"Clint, _now_ ," says the woman.

The door closes behind them.

"I -" says Betty.

"I'm sorry about them," says Bruce. "You get used to it."

"You get -"

"Erm, we kind of - it's basically - it's basically college all over again, you know, when I shared that dorm with Sam Parker, only... there's more of them, and they're not really douchebags unless Tony hasn't had coffee."

"I'm starting to think I need a drink," says Betty.

"OK," says Bruce. "We can do that. And then... I should probably explain about the Avengers Initiative."  
  
*********  
  
"I have been reliably informed that I was outta line," says Darcy. She grimaces. "Sometimes I don't realise that. I think that's half the reason Tony agreed to hire me. Um, sorry?"

And Betty, who has had a drink in the meantime and is comfortably buzzed and happy and sort of astonished by this Avengers business, remembers ruefully that Darcy is... what, twenty-two, and couldn't know that Betty has come to consider herself virulently allergic to mentions of her father.

"I probably was as well," she says. "Shake?"

They do so.

  
*********

  
So it's a quarter past ten at night and Betty's standing on the topmost level of Stark Tower with Bruce's arm around her, having just eaten dinner with _Captain America_ and a _demigod_ , to say nothing of the _spies_ , and Tony Stark says to her cheerfully, "Anyway, did you want that job? Because Bruce could really do with a demotion, he doesn't spend nearly enough time in his actual office," and Betty laughs and says, "I'll think about it - how's that?"

She thinks, though, that she probably _does_ want it.


End file.
